Speakers Alexander A. Antonopoulos and Nishat Awan approach politics of locations and bodies, representations of biological, biographical and geographic migrational transitions. How to re-imagine lines of separations as contact zones that allow for solidarity and change ?

During the event, the interactive installation Tanukis XY by artist François Zajéga can be visited in the big hall.

☞ Topological Atlas - Nishat Awan (Sheffield School of Architecture, author of Diasporic Agencies)

The politicised nature of the discourse around migration means that visual representations are often used in deliberate ways to promote certain agendas. We also live in a time of visual overload, surrounded by large numbers of images available on the net, social media etc., including computationally derived visualisations of large scale data that are being used more frequently across academia and journalism. Nishat Awan will speak around a new project, Topological Atlas, that explores these issues and attempts to visualise border regimes from the point-of-view of those who attempt to cross national territories. This is, of course, an ethical choice and one requiring a participative approach that attends to the politics of location. Topological Atlas takes seriously the problem of the ubiquity of the image and the disjointedness of information to produce visual narratives and counter geographies of/ at borders.

☞ Trans-marcations in the Age of Trans: A personal history of the bodies, borders, practices, and passports of transition - Alexander A. Antonopoulos (Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University Montreal)

In this presentation of a personal journey through multiple sites of passage that intersect with an alchemically generated gender identity and transition, Alexander A. Antonopoulos will draw on new directions emerging from trans studies, queer studies, and new materialism, in order to turn attention toward the geopolitical, biopolitical, archival and historical significance of the legacy of the passport. Ranging from changes in bodily biological processes and affects to the geopolitics of movement across national border, tools will be explored for archiving personal histories and transsexual autobiography in this era of transgender-based identity and politics.